Adventure – The Magnificent 60s

Deep Water (2026) ****- Seen on Amazon Prime

In my mind there is a special category for the well-made B-picture that cuts itself no slack, doesn’t indulge in airs and graces, and doesn’t spend valuable screen time pontificating on the world’s woes or weighing the picture down with romance or some mawkish drama. Little time is wasted here, either, on providing characters with any depth, in fact we don’t even find out what’s bugging First Officer Ben (Aaron Eckhart) till literally the final scene of the movie. And as you know I’m pretty keen on sharks or any other ferocious beast from the deep sea, so my tendency is always to err on the side of praise.

But for a B-picture this goes three ways. First we’re in disaster movie territory with an incredible airplane crash, then we’re in survival mode as the disparate group of passengers are adrift in the ocean, buoyed up by what remains of the sinking plane, and finally you realize this has all just been bait-and-switch because actually what we’re headed for is a shark movie.

This is not just in very safe hands, director Renny Harlin having been here before (terrors of the deep wise) in Deep Blue Sea (1999) and he’s no stranger to racking the tension up to 11 what with Die Hard 2 (1990) and Cliffhanger (1993) in his locker. And it’s a pretty confident director who uses elegiac music to undercut the scenes of horror on a plane falling out of the sky, with passengers battered by all sorts of missiles, not to mention a plane on fire, and huge holes being torn through the fuselage and people being sucked out.

It’s not a hijack thank goodness and the plane doesn’t land in a country riven with civil war or endangered by terrorists. Instead, calamity is caused by a faulty mobile phone that sets fire to a piece of luggage in the cargo hold which subsequently engulfs the plane. Karaoke king Rich (Ben Kingsley) is the captain, but he doesn’t last long, trapped in the cockpit after the crash and waiting with stiff upper lip for death.

There’s nothing original about the passengers and there’s no actor in a breakout role here. There’s a small child (Molly Belle Wright) who’s obnoxious to her brother, their parents caught in the middle of a conjugal exercise in the toilet when the plane goes down, a couple of odious characters – one a bully, the other just the kind of rude entitled guy (Angus Sampson) always stirring up trouble – and a younger couple struggling to commit. And then it’s just perm a dozen hazardous situations from the aftermath of the crash, whether it’s the bits of the plane that are still afloat beginning to be swallowed up by the sea, or those trapped in the part that’s stuck upside down on the seabed, or those being picked off by a posse of sharks, plus the usual tension between the survivors.

There’s a nod to The Italian Job (1969) when to keep the plane wreck on an even keel some passengers have to go into watery back. And while you can’t get away from Jaws (1975) or the wild Under Paris (2024), the sharks here don’t need much of an ominous introduction, either via musical motif or scientific mumjo-jumbo explaining their unlikely presence (hardly required since they’re just where you’d expect to find them). No sooner has the first fin appeared than they’re lopping off body parts. They’re more athletic than I’ve seen from the breed, liable to heave themselves out of the water onto a life raft and even capable of downing a helicopter.

And our Ben isn’t the commanding hero one usually requires in a movie like this. He’s clearly as traumatized as the rest of them, and getting a sock in the mouth (literally) from passengers slagging him off for crash-landing in the first place. It does play kinda safe where the death toll is concerned. The two kids ain’t going to be anybody’s lunch any time soon and the commitment-phobic couple are too sweet to knock off. But after that any one is game for death.

Some excellent twists including a rescue boat that can’t come close enough to rescue the survivors because the water is too shallow around a dangerous reef.

The scenes on board the aircraft as it starts to come apart, engines falling off, the shell of the plane sprung loose, and passengers killed by falling luggage or anything else loose in the air, are just horrific.

This was actually a movie that flopped so badly on U.S. release that it didn’t make it to our shores and while it’s a good fit for Amazon as a streamer, it’s had more thought put into the production than is normal for the streamers.

Hugely enjoyable.

Hellfighters (1969) ****

I’m sticking my neck out on this one – under-rated would be an understatement – and primarily because it’s the Duke’s most intriguing film of the decade and possibly ever. For a start we have John Wayne The Quitter (the hell you say!). Then he ducks out of the picture for a full quarter of an hour (he does what?). Fast forward a couple of years and this would have led the disaster cycle pack – a little tinkering with the structure and you would have all four principals fighting fires in South America in the middle of a revolution (beat that, The Towering Inferno.) But most enthralling of all this is a family drama masquerading as an action picture.

And it led me to thinking if True Grit (1969) had not landed on Wayne’s doorstep whether he would have continued down the dramatic rather than the action road for the tail end of his career. He had just collected his first million-dollar fee so in box office terms he was untouchable. And just for the record, the action scenes, especially given the absence of CGI, are terrific. Sure, the oil’s a little bit too thin to pass for real oil, but it does gets sloshed over all concerned, including the Duke, by the bucketload.

And it might be a shade on the episodic side, Chance Buckman (John Wayne) and compadres racing from one hellish event to another, but it’s wrapped around a tight dramatic core, Chance vs independent daughter Tish (Katharine Ross), Chance vs one-time sidekick and now Tish’s husband Greg (Jim Hutton), Chance vs. Tish’s mother Madelyn (Vera Miles) and Chance vs. all the dimwits on the board of the company he quit his own operation to join.

Chance is based on the real-life Red Adair, an oilman who had invented the extremely scientific but extremely dangerous method of putting out oil-well fires. When a gazillion gallons of oil spurting unchecked out of the ground catch fire you’ve got a helluva problem on your hands. A gazillion gallons of water ain’t going to cut it. The only solution is to cut off the oxygen supply long enough to cap the well. Red Adair’s technique: blast the oxygen out of the way. He’d attach drums filled with massive amounts of nitro-glycerine, roll them into the blaze on the end of cranes, hide behind nothing more resilient than hazard suits and shields made of corrugated iron, and detonate them. The resulting explosion did the trick.

The picture opens with this stunt, although after being accidentally injured, Chance is hospitalized, bringing estranged daughter and ex-wife into the dramatic frame. After a pretty frosty meet-cute, Tish and Greg hit it off and get married, forcing Tish to confront the fear that drove Chance and Madelyn apart, that, like the wife of a Formula One driver, she never knows if her husband will come back. This bothers the feisty Tish a lot less than the weary Madelyn. And she even ignores all protocol and rushes to her husband’s side, regardless of the danger.

Meanwhile, Chance decides not only has he had enough of dicing with danger but he can leave his company in the safe hands of Greg. His life now on a more mundane keel, Madelyn is attracted back. But of course it wouldn’t do for Chance to live out retirement with nothing more testy than board meetings so he comes back into the fray during a rebellion in Venezula and both women have to confront their true feelings.

The action, considering the lack of CGI, or the kind of budget available to The Towering Inferno, is first-class. This is the ideal movie reversal. Instead of running away from a fire, these characters race towards it. There are some hair-raising moments. At one blowout, gas is leaking from the ground, poisoning everyone in sight, Greg is trapped underwater. And should complacency sneak in, fire, being on the unpredictable side, is prone to sudden explosion.

John Wayne (The Undefeated, 1969) has always excelled at restrained emotion and here he gets both barrels. Having got rid of the over-protective wife he’s now saddled with a daughter he’s desperate to protect from the hell he put his wife through. He’s faultless here, given considerably more acting scope than normal and not, as in McLintock (1963), just able to tan a woman’s backside, presenting a more contemporary male, perhaps as puzzled by female behavior as any of his cowboys, but taking a more modern approach to resolving his feelings.

Katharine Ross (Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, 1969) has her best role, not a mere appendage as in her other films of this period, but driving forward the action through her independence. Jim Hutton (Walk, Don’t Run, 1966) is growing on me. I’ve reversed my view of him as a lightweight. Vera Miles (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962) does a pretty good job of playing older – she was not yet 40 – and essays a complicated character, more rounded than was often the case with the female lead in Wayne pictures. Veterans Jay C. Flippen (Firecreek, 1968) and Bruce Cabot (The Undefeated) head the support.

The perennially underrated Andrew V McLaglen (The Undefeated) does a pretty good job with the action, as you might expect, but is also savvy enough to let the dramatic scenes flow. Clair Huffaker (Rio Conchos, 1964) penned the screenplay.

Guilty pleasure personified, you might say, but I’d retort that this is a damn fine picture erroneously ignored – rating only two paragraphs in Scott Eyman’s 650-page biography of John Wayne for example – possibly because it appeared in between the critically-reviled The Green Berets (1968) and the critically-acclaimed True Grit.

Heart of the Beast (2026) **** – Seen at the Cinema

To be honest, I hadn’t been too keen on this one. I’ve moaned before about having to spend an interminable amount of time focusing on just one actor on the screen and much as I admire Brad Pitt – and F1: The Movie (2025) has become an all-time fave – I didn’t want to be guy that watched him not pulling it off. Plus, haven’t we been here before with Channing Taum and Dog (2022) and Leonardo DiCaprio out in the wilderness in The Revenant (2015). Plus plus, had Pitt never heard of old Hollywood adage of note working with animals and children.

And that adage proved correct because Odin the dog playing Odin the dog is immense. Not much to boast about in the cute department, but boy, isn’t he useful to have around in a tussle with wolves and any dog who can stare down an angry bear would go up a notch in anyone’s estimation. Plus, he has soulful eyes and it takes a good deal of strength for director David Ayer to resist the temptation just to quietly ease Pitt out of the picture altogether so charismatic is the canine.

But then Pitt hasn’t got where he is without having charisma of his own and I have to confess that he belongs to a very small group of actors – Matt Damon, DiCaprio, Timothy Chalamet, De Niro – who you can’t keep your eyes off when onscreen. That quiet intensity that draws you in then says, aw shucks, I’m just a laid-back dude, just stick with me and I’ll see you through.

This ain’t the kind the kind of territory it says on the tin, nothing like the freezing wilderness facing DiCaprio, but if you’ve got a heart condition, a broken arm and ultimately a ton of other crippling wounds, even walking from a remote point through Alaska 60 miles from anywhere (and that anywhere is just an invisible dot on the map, not a town or hamlet or anything, just a flatter, easier, terrain) on a peaceful summer’s day would be a stretch.

There’s no suggestion that ex-soldier James Belmont (Brad Pitt) is looking for a peaceful spot to die, but, for a survival expert he’s pretty damn dumb when it comes to medical supplies for dealing with a dodgy heart, a mouthful of aspirin ain’t going to do the trick. But otherwise, in survival terms, he’s on the ball, and part of the movie’s appeal is watching a survival expert at work, you could be sitting there taking notes he’s so good.

And you would be doing just that if there wasn’t a massive emotional tug that grips you from the start, the relationship between dog and man is just terrific, a buddy movie if you accept one is a canine. There’s nothing particularly novel about the action sequences – plane crash, walking over a ravine using a dodgy log, riding the rapids on your back, battling wolves and bears – but each is meticulously worked out and compellingg, especially the wolf attack.

The scene that sticks most in my mind, however, is the one the director makes not attempt to highlight. Belmont is sitting on an escarpment while his blood pools in holes in the rock.

Both dog and man suffer from PTSD and maybe being away from everyone is a way of dealing with it, and Belmont makes sure he’s packed enough beer to while away the evenings. The dog can give him lessons in survival, can pluck a salmon out of the river with his bear teeth, ignores Belmont’s command to avert his eyes from the bear, just flat-out stares the monster down.

Nobody’s going to be pushing Pitt for an Oscar, not while there are a bucket of more showy performances out there this year, but he should be a good outside bet, especially as he delivers on the most important front, keeping the audience hooked. This has started well enough at the box office but I’ve got a sneaky feeling it’s going to be a word-of-mouth hit driven by people like me who had their minimal expectations overturned.

That old crusty fella you saw in the trailer turns out to be J.K. Simmons (The Accountant 2, 2025), but he’s hardly in it. David Ayer (The Beekeeper, 2024) knows how to mine a great actor. Debut screenplay from music video director Cameron Alexander.

Riveting.

The Lost World (1960) ***

A pair of pink knee-length boots, courtesy of adventuress Jennifer (Jill St John), are among the wondrous sights awaiting our band of intrepid explorers. She’s not the only curiosity, Professor Challenger (Claude Rains) is certainly the most obstreperous of archaeologists, aristocrat Hoxton (Michael Rennie) must have a screw loose to keep on resisting the charms of Jennifer, while Gomez (Fernando Lamas) brings along his guitar to (literally) strike a chord at appropriate moments. But it’s a fun ride – cannibals, volcano, giant phosphorescent spiders, carnivorous plants, and dinosaurs.

There are secrets, too. Hoxton has been here – a lost plateau in the middle of the Amazon – before and abandoned an earlier exploration in favour of hunting for the mythical diamonds of El Dorado, Gomez wants to kill Hoxton, Jennifer plans to hook a duke, and Professor Summerlee (Richard Haydn) wants more than anything else to prove Challenger wrong.

*A bit of poetic licence here by the illustrator, Jill St John’s pants staying intact throughout.*

And of course, in the way of dinosaur pictures, having battled to find the damned creatures, intrepidity goes out the window and the explorers spend all their time running away from the dinosaurs, seeking a hidden way down from the plateau, while being hunted by cannibals. Any time you see a ledge you know there’s something terrible above – battling monsters with long tails capable of swishing you downwards – or below, not just a sea of lava but a giant sea beast. The only element that’s missing is the booby-traps. Unfortunately, all the spunk goes out of the otherwise spunky Jennifer when faced with monsters and she turns into the quivering screaming cliché.

But the script is on point, feelings indicated by action rather than dialog. Having learned of Hoxton’s past, Jennifer spurns him by refusing a cigarette and a moment later taking one of her own, Gomez sneaks glances at a mysterious locket. With so much action there’s little time for romance so mainly by looks and the occasional rescue sparks fly between Jennifer and newspaperman Ed (David Hedison) and between Jennifer’s brother David (Ray Stricklyn) and the native girl (Vitina Marcus). And to alleviate the drab scenery there’s always Jennifer in a new bright outfit and, for comic effect, her poodle.

Given that writer-producer-director Irwin Allen (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, 1961) was unable to hire the likes of Ray Harryhausen (Jason and the Argonauts, 1963) for the special effects or even find the budget to utilize the drawings of Willis O’Brien (King Kong, 1933) who had been responsible for the stop-motion techniques in the original silent version of The Lost World (1925), the monsters come across on the small screen as acceptable enough. The infusion of sub-plots keeps the project ticking along.

Allen made significant changes to the original – introducing the diamonds, making Challenger rather than following in the footsteps of a previous explorer having previously visited the plateau but lost his proof, swapping the heroine’s pet monkey for a pet poodle, turning the heroine into a gold-digger, substituting as plateau inhabitants natives for ape men, and adding the heroine’s wardrobe. The spicing up of the story helps divert the tale in certain places from the dinosaurs, so the tension is not just waiting for the next attack.

Oddly enough, the film strikes a very contemporary note with regards to the current contentious issue of invasion of privacy. Challenger hits out at pestering journalists for what he views as the invasion of his privacy. Later on he says, “invasion of privacy gives man the right to kill,” but that bold statement relates to the explorers breaching the lost sanctuary, “we are the invaders.”

It’s still pretty enjoyable stuff especially allowing for the budget limitations. None of the actors is called upon to do much, which is what you would expect, although Claude Rains is a surprise and Jill St John a delight. Michael Rennie (Hotel, 1967), primarily there for his stiff-upper-lip, is provided with a neat reversal, the supposed hero with feet of clay. Claude Rains (Casablanca, 1942) is the standout as the feisty bombastic professor not above battering annoying newspapermen with his umbrella.

In an early role, Jill St John (The Liquidator, 1965) provides not just sultry evidence of her physical charms, but carries a terrific almost playful screen presence, though she’s better as the tough gal in a man’s world of the earlier section of the movie than the damsel in distress of the last part. Former Latin movie heartthrob Fernando Lamas (100 Rifles, 1969) is the only other one with a decent part, participating in the expedition to find his lost brother. Vitina Marcus (Taras Bulba, 1963) has a small but pivotal role. David Hedison (Live and Let Die, 1973) and Ray Stricklyn (Track of Thunder, 1967) are outshone by their respective amours. Jay Costa (Escape from Zahrain, 1962) is a pantomime villain.

Charles Bennett (City in the Sea, 1965) helped Irwin Allen flesh out the screenplay.

A High Wind in Jamaica (1965) ***

Forget swashbuckling shenanigans in the Captain Blood (1935) and Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) vein, this has more in keeping with Lord of the Flies (1963) as a bunch of third-rate pirates get more than they bargained for after kidnapping a bunch of English children.

The pirates are clever enough when required, using the ruse of pretending to be a ship in distress to defeat an enemy, capable of torturing a captured captain into revealing concealed treasure, or hiding from pursuit by disguising the masts with palm leaves, but generally short on intelligence. That the kidnapping is unintentional, no sensible pirate wanting the British Navy breathing down its neck, gives an indication of the mentality of Captain Chavez (Anthony Quinn) and his mate Zac (James Coburn). Nor are the children Disney-cute and far from being petrified they see it as a great adventure while the crew are superstitious about having the youngsters aboard.

The kids have great fun running rings round the pirates, stealing Chavez’s hat, climbing the rigging, and ringing the bell, while turning round the ship’s figurehead provokes another bout of superstition. When the kids are eventually imprisoned in a rowboat to prevent upsetting the crew they still manage to do so by playing a game that the crew take too seriously.

An attempt to abandon the children on the island of Tampico fails when the oldest boy John (Martin Amis) dies by accident. The children are unperturbed by his death, the only question raised is who can have his blanket. Much to his surprise Chavez discovers he has a strong paternal side, protective when he discovers that one of his captives is a young woman rather than a child, and going against the wishes of his crew when he tends to a knife wound on Emily (Deborah Baxter).

The children are far more grown-up and matter-of-fact than the childish crew, consumed by superstition, and Chavez, consumed by emotion. Although there is considerable comedy to be had from the children’s endeavors, it’s largely an adult film about children. In general, they don’t react the way they would in a Disney picture, nor in the manner which many adults would expect. The sexual tension of the book is considerably underplayed. But the fact that the adults are brought into harm’s way by sheer folly, and their reactions to life are essentially childish, creates a contrast with the more savage attitudes of the children. Emily essentially exposes Chavez’s guilty conscience.

While there is ambivalence aplenty, the depths the book explored go unexplored here, much to the benefit of the picture. The movie dances a tightrope as the children who would otherwise expect to trust an adult grow to learn how to distrust, a rather sharper lesson in growing up than they might have anticipated from their middle-class innocent lives.

Alexander Mackendrick (The Ladykillers, 1955) excels in ensuring the tightrope remains in place while taking advantage of the opportunity for comedy, the realization that this adventure is far from fun only becoming gradually apparent.

Anthony Quinn (Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968) reins in his tendency to ham things up, and his development from unbridled pirate to responsible adult is an interesting one. James Coburn (Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round, 1966) reins in the flashing teeth and reveals a more ruthless side than his captain anticipated. Deborah Baxter (The Wind and the Lion, 1975) is easily the pick of the kids although future novelist Martin Amis with his trademark sneer gives her a run for her money.

Lila Kedrova (Torn Curtain, 1966) appears as a brothel madam, Nigel Davenport (Sebastian, 1968) as the father and Gert Frobe (Goldfinger, 1964) as the captured captain. The cast also includes Dennis Price (Tamahine, 1963) and Vivienne Ventura (Battle Beneath the Earth, 1967).

Stanley Mann (Woman of Straw, 1964), Ronald Harwood (The Dresser, 1983) and Denis Cannan (Woman of Straw) wrote the screenplay based on the celebrated Richard Hughes novel.

The Fighting Prince of Donegal (1966) ***

I’m amazed I sat through this without complaint as a kid. This was a rare outing for me, given I grew up in a town without a cinema and the only time I went was for a roadshow musical at Xmas or if we were away on holiday for the summer in towns that were bursting with picture houses. No doubt my parents, of Irish descent, were seduced by the last word of the title while assuming that the second word would be enough to keep us kids happy.

Unfortunately, the title is something of a misnomer. The titular character Hugh O’Donnell (Peter McEnery) spends more time sitting on his backside in a prison than he does engaging in any form of fighting. And in another annoying dupe, swords are scarcely in evidence, the weapon of choice being a wooden club of sorts, so it hardly qualifies as the swashbuckler the poster suggests.

Where Walt Disney was happy to play fast and loose with other aspects of history in other movies, here he cleaves close to the truth – though Hugh didn’t marry a McSweeney and his father didn’t die – so what we get is some kind of rebellion story, as the Irish attempt to rise up against the occupying English in the 1580s. If you are aware of your history, you will know that Oliver Cromwell is to blame for the English re-conquest of Ireland. Various rebellions followed, of which this is one.

It starts off promisingly enough with a nice bit of myth, that when Hugh becomes chief of the Clan O’Donnell he triggers a prophecy that insists the Irish will become free. That’s easier said than done due to the lack of a cohesive rebellion force thanks to infighting and historical distrust between the clans. And when Hugh does attempt to stand up against the British he’s promptly imprisoned – again and again.

A better title would be The Escapologist of Donegal because that’s mostly, except for the beginning and final sections, what this is about. He escapes, is betrayed and recaptured, or escapes, racing through the streets of Dublin, and remains free and then manages to gather the clans under his banner and take on the English.

And, actually, Hugh is not that keen on the use of force to win freedom. He prefers negotiation. So you can imagine how exciting that is for the kids in the audience. He wants to unite all the clans and hope the English will see sense. Luckily, for the frustrated kids in the audience, the English are not inclined to sit around a negotiating table. So, at last, we get a battle.

To save it from just being a history lesson, a romance is sneaked in between Hugh and Kathleen McSweeney (Susan Hampshire), daughter of another clan chief, and who already has an ardent admirer. A wedding is the easiest way to create unity between clans, but, luckily, this isn’t just the political matchmaking that occurred in England and Europe.

But that nascent romance is put on the back burner for most of the picture while Hugh sits in jail or runs around the country in escape mode.

So, a few fights with cudgels and fisticuffs, some bonding with other prisoners, some wooing of the clans until at last at last there is the semblance of a battle.

Nearly 60 years on from first viewing I am not won over. The politics and maneuvering is certainly more interesting to an adult, but I am still miffed at the absence of much actual swordplay – and you know how fond I am of a swashbuckler. It’s just too earnest in setting up a rebellion tale and the escapes have none of the ingenuity we have come to expect from such.

Peter McEnery (The Moon-Spinners, 1964) looks distinctly uncomfortable as a matinee idol of the kind groomed by Disney, especially when you see what he was capable of a few years later in the more scandalous Negatives (1968). Susan Hampshire (The Trygon Factor, 1966) only tops and tails the picture and her entire Disney experience was clearly so miserable she excised it from her biography.

Directed by Michael O’Herlihy (Smith!, 1969) from a screenplay by debutant Robert T. Reilley based on the Robert Westerby novel.

Tarzan and the Great River (1967) ***

Tarzan (Mike Henry) has been repurposed as an international adventurer dropped into trouble spots an ocean away from his African roots. He’s the male equivalent of the bikini-clad females peppering the espionage genre, kitted out in only a loincloth, torso kept bare for the titillation of the ladies. And just like the James Bond series, there’s an evil personage, and while not in the business of taking over the world still wanting to dominate a good chunk of it in South America. Barcuna (Rafer Johnson), espouses the Jaguar death cult, terrorizing villages and enslaving their inhabitants for the purpose of searching for diamonds.

To fill out the narrative, a good chunk of the picture is spent with riverboat Captain Sam Bishop (Jan Murray) and the native orphan Pepe (Manuel Padilla Jr.) he has unofficially adopted and their comic shtick mostly involving the older man cheating at cards is all we’ve got to keep the drama going until the female in distress, Dr Ann Philips (Diana Millay), turns up. But, as you know, Tarzan is no lothario, unlike his colleagues in the espionage department, so we don’t have to wonder if romance is going to raise its ugly head.

*Wrong continent. No tigers were used in this film.*

In the meantime the producer has scoured the vaults for stock footage and clearly is of the opinion that if you can transplant Tarzan from his natural African habitat you can do the same with hippos. Tarzan wrestles a lion and a crocodile and despatches Barcuna’s henchmen on land and in the river, swimming underwater and tipping over canoes to do his part in keeping the local crocodiles well-fed.

Barcuna, meanwhile, roasts alive anyone caught trying to escape, though he allows the good doctor to escape either because he’s not partial to blondes or he reckons she won’t be much good at hunting for diamonds or, as suggested once he burns her village, because he wants her to let everyone know that he’s the big cheese around here.

There’s the usual plague subplot. Dr Millay is waiting on the arrival of a vaccine to fight a new plague – Bishop is delivering the stuff – but she has a job getting the natives to accept inoculation and it’s only when Pepe offers himself as a guinea pig that the others queue up.

Devoid of the gadgets, speedboats and fast cars of the espionage genre, Tarzan relies on the speed of his legs as if he was auditioning for the Tom Cruise role in Mission Impossible or that of Liam Neeson in the Taken series. There’s a spectacular fight between Tarzan and Barcuna for the climax.

Harmless stuff, as innocuous as the others in the trilogy featuring former football player Mike Henry (The Green Berets, 1968). They were filmed back-to-back in 1965 and released at the rate of one a year from 1966. This was the third time producer Sy Wintraub’s had reinvented Tarzan. He had previously shepherded home a pair – starting with Tarzan’s Great Adventure (1959) – starring Gordon Scott. Jock Mahoney inherited the mantle with Tarzan Goes to India (1962) and lasted for one more adventure.

This was the last of a quartet of outings with Tarzan for director Robert Day (She, 1965). Written by Bob Barbash (The Plunderers, 1960).

Perfect Saturday matinee material.

Tarzan Goes to India (1962) ***

Helluva fillip for reissue and credibility purposes to be able to point to the picture being helmed by the director – John Guillermin – of The Towering Inferno (1974), not to mention King Kong (1976) and The Blue Max (1966) – which suggested top-notch skills if not the budget to match. Guillermin, who also had a share in the screenplay, does a pretty good job of tailoring the picture to highlight issues that in others of the series are treated in more comedic fashion and making tremendous use of the location, far more than subsequent directors do with South American scenery. Elephants go mano a mano, Tarzan has a tussle with a leopard, but for sheer realism there’s little to beat a tiny mongoose putting a cobra in its place.

But what could be more timely for today’s audiences than presenting Tarzan (Jock Mahoney) as an eco-warrior. He is brought in to rescue a herd of 300 wild elephants being drowned when a much-needed hydroelectric dam is opened. Dam engineers Bryce (Leo Gordon) and O’Hara (Mark Dana), who show no compunction about the high death rate among the native laborers, are even less concerned about the fate of the elephants especially as have very tight deadline – the onset of the monsoon season – to meet. Princess Kamara (Simi Garewal), daughter of an old friend from Tarzan’s Africa days, is trying to get villagers out of the way as well. She’s not helped by Bryce’s top engineer Raj (Jagdish Raj) who sides with Bryce.

The main problem is that elephants can’t climb hills and are led by Bala, a rogue of the species, whom Tarzan determines he’ll have to eliminate. He’s helped by a small boy Jai who rides his own elephant Gajendra. Jai’s not there for comedic purpose and Tarzan helps him grow up, their bond facilitated by Tarzan saving the ivory-tusked beast from Bryce in white hunter mode.

Baits abound. Tarzan is chained to a tree by Bryce to entice a leopard. The boy is used, again by Bryce, as lure to draw Tarzan out into the open at the climax. Raj changes sides on seeing how cheaply Bryce treats life, but there’s no time for him to get lovey-dovey with the princess. Which is just as well because Tarzan’s got a lot on his plate. His plan to put an arrow through Bala’s brain goes awry, triggering the Gajandra-Bala duel, which is very well done.

Although set in India, this feels more like the real thing than the sojourns in South America. We never see Tarzan in a suit but I don’t think anyone thought to compare his entrance, emerging from a river clad only in loin-cloth, with the other more famous screen entrance of the year, that of Ursula Andress in Dr No. Tarzan does plenty of swimming, even employing the breathing through a reed trick, and swings through the trees, and runs a lot barefoot, and gets to ride on the back of an elephant. The absence of his usual animal sidekicks is no hindrance. His scenes with the young boy are touching rather than sentimental or clumsily jokey. The kid’s pretty smart, which helps.

Kamara’s there merely to help along the subplot rather than for romantic purposes. Given the lean running time (86 minutes) that kind of palaver would only get in the way. This was shot entirely on location, and it shows, no awkward switches to studio set-ups, glorious scenery all the way.

Best of all John Guillermin, who also helmed Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure (1959), knows how to construct a scene, and how to get the best out of actors whose acting skills would not be considered their main attributes. So it looks good whichever way you cut it.

Former stunt man and athlete Jock Mahoney makes the switch from Tarzan nemesis (Tarzan the Magnificent, 1960) to Tarzan with ease. Less muscle-bound than his predecessors, he brings a more mature tone to proceedings, exuding thoughtfulness more than being gung-ho.

One of the better Tarzans of the decade.

Kingdom of Heaven (2005) ***

I’m conscious of entering contentious waters especially as a new 4K DVD edition of the 195-minute Director’s Cut – expanded from the original 144-minute version – is being released by Twentieth Century Fox to coincide with today’s theatrical 20^th anniversary theatrical release. Normally, that would have filled me with joy because I was a huge fan of the original Director’s Cut, which, it is true, added considerable depth to the film as initially screened.

But in watching the Director’s Cut as the first part of a proposed All-Time Top Ten double bill with Any Given Sunday (1999) I discovered to my horror it was not the film I remembered and had for many years championed. The flaws were all too obvious, it was extremely wordy, rammed full of characters and a narrative that ran all over the place trying to keep up with itself.

We should begin with the major flaw and that’s the casting of Orlando Bloom, fresh from his breakthrough role in Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), as Balian the blacksmith. The role was written for Russell Crowe but schedule clash prevented his involvement. Director Ridley Scott went ahead anyway and Bloom doesn’t remotely convince as a leader.

Though most of the picture is based on historical fact, the initial MacGuffin doesn’t make sense. For the purposes of the narrative we need to get blacksmith Balian to the Crusades. Balian’s wife (Nathalie Cox), seen briefly (and happily) in flashback, has committed suicide because of a miscarriage which seems a mighty odd reason, and we are never made privy to whatever other mental problems afflicted her. In those days, if you committed suicide you could not be buried in sacred ground and furthermore your head was chopped off. Now, admittedly, the local priest (Michael Sheen), Balian’s half-brother, is a creepy character, but it hardly seems to justify Balian thrusting a sword through his heart and setting him on fire.

But, don’t you know it, if you run off to the Crusades you win a get-out-of-jail-free card rather than being hung for your crime. So Balian joins up with his dad Godfrey (Liam Neeson) who has returned briefly from the Crusades and initially been rejected by his son. They’re attacked by soldiers seeking to arrest Balian but, wouldn’t you know it, after a few lessons from his old man, Balian turns out to be an ace swordsman.

Eventually, after a few adventures and shipwreck and fortuitous encounter with Muslim Imad a-Din – remember the name because he later plays a critical role – he reaches Jerusalem and is confronted with a wordfest, a heavy distillation of philosophy, a narrative that flits around fragile peace between Christian and Muslim, and woman of intrigue Sibylla (Eva Green) whose husband Guy happens to be the leader of the anti-Muslim forces.

It might have helped if Godfrey hadn’t inconveniently died, of wounds while protecting his son, because Liam Neeson strikes you immediately as a leader and not the kind of actor like Bloom who is only a leader because the script says so. Anyways, before we can get down to any of the stirring and visually commanding action for which Ridley Scott is rightly acclaimed, Balian, who remember is a blacksmith, turns before our eyes into a wizard of an engineer and before you know it a parched piece of land is fully irrigated. It’s a lovely sequence, to be sure, and accompanied by my favorite piece of music (score by Harry Gregson-Smith) in the film, but not particularly believable.

Nor is the romance, Sibylla now deciding on adultery with her husband’s enemy. And, again, to be sure, much of the extra footage does fill out her character, but that still leaves a jumble of other characters fighting for political power – the dying masked King of Jerusalem, Baldwin IV (Edward Norton), a leper; City Marshal Tiberias (Jeremy Irons); the aforementioned Guy and his sidekick Raynald (Brendan Gleeson); assorted Knight Templars who are ferociously anti-Muslim; and parked outside the city gates Muslin chief Saladin (Ghassan Massoud).

The story, if you can still keep sight of it amongst all this intrigue, is that Guy and Raynald and the Knights Templar want to spark a Holy War, ending years of peace, restoring Jerusalem to sole ownership of the Christians, rather than being equally shared (though, noticeably, no Muslims on any of the ruling factions).

Anyway, eventually, after we’re done with philosophizing and Balian making hay with Sibylla, we get to the action and at last the movie takes flight, and though you no longer particularly believe in Balian as a leader of men he does show some tactical awareness. There’s a superb pitched battle against superior forces and a magnificent siege. Written by William Monahan (The Departed, 2006).

But watching the Director’s Cut again I came away wishing for the shorter version, though very little could compensate for the casting of Orlando Bloom.

I might change my mind if I get to see it in the cinema again but for the moment it’s lost its coveted place in my All-Time Top Ten.

Unstoppable (2010) ****

Fitting swansong for director Tony Scott (The Hunger, 1983). Throwback to the disaster movie of the 1970s when something enormous is going to be decimated, and lives, in this case three-quarters of a million citizens, are put at deadly risk. Distant cousin to Speed (1994), which bears no comparison in the potential mayhem department, since an ordinary bus carries a fraction of the power of a train with 30-odd train cars (carriages to the English) filled with deadly toxic cargo barreling along at 60mph. Basically, “a missile.” And while other trains can be sidelined to get out of its way, it’s headed for an unavoidable obstacle, a piece of raised track in a major city which bends so sharply it can only be safely negotiated at 20mph or thereabouts.

And while said train is a wrecking ball when it comes to anything that happens to be on the track at the same time, the tail end of another train for example or a horse-box, it runs not so much on action as character. The various explosions are just there to remind us how dangerous the damn thing is and to raise tension by perilous degrees.

On board are two opposites, veteran driver Frank (Denzel Washington) and entitled surly know-it-all rookie Will (Chris Pine), who’s the train conductor and technically, I guess, in charge. Not quite open hostility but not far off it.

Frank’s a widower with two daughters who work, as he shamefacedly admits, in Hooters (look it up) while Will has been slapped with a restraining order from his wife and lucky not to be facing a jail sentence for pulling a gun on a cop. On top of that, in a money-saving ploy, Will’s the kind of employee recruited by the company to replace Frank, who, it turns out, is only three weeks away from enforced retirement. So that’s a twist on the gangster trope of the character planning one last big job.

I should point out that thanks to a lazy employee, this is a runaway train, no driver on board, air brakes unconnected, other safety elements unharnessed, nothing to stop it picking up speed and heading straight to hell. Luckily, it’s not full of passengers. I’m being a bit cynical here because a trainload of shrieking passengers and back stories to take account of would have dissipated, rather than increased, the tension.

But there’s also in the back office boss Connie (Rosario Dawson) trying to do her job in the face of the corporate greed, money-grabbing chief executive Galvin (Kevin Dunn) more concerned about the $100 million the company will lose if this goes belly-up, not to mention the catastrophic effect on the share price, so he’s full-on in on barmy schemes to stop the train, including parachuting someone onto the train and trying to bring it to a halt in a much smaller town which can be more easily evacuated than one with a 750,000 population.

Needless to say, none of these dumb ideas work, but it’s fun to watch the high-ups get egg on their faces and watch the cost of the collateral damage escalate. All the while, this being Tony Scott, we’ve got helicopters whizzing around, a huge flotilla of cop cars on blue light duty, uniforms everywhere, and that amazing technical trick that Scott has mastered of having the camera racing past characters who are stock still.

Frank and Will operate like a tag team when it comes to saving the day, Frank hopping from car roof to car roof having come up with the great wheeze of applying the brakes on each individual train car (carriage to you English) and Will at a lower level engaged on similar hazardous enterprise and then not just leaping from a train doing 60mph to a vehicle racing alongside doing 60mph but leaping back onto the train from said car going at an even higher speed.

Denzel Washington (Gladiator II, 2024) – who had been train bound the year before in Scott’s remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009) – and Chris Pine (Don’t Worry, Darling, 2022) are on top form. As too is Rosario Dawson (Trance, 2013), for once given a decent role rather than just as a sidekick/love interest/femme fatale.

Written by Mark Bomback (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, 2014). It’s worth noting that actors looking for career longevity could do worse than follow the example of Denzel Washington who, since he became a top-billed star, has worked consistently with three directors, Tony Scott, Ridley Scott and Antoine Fuqua.

A cracker.